Wednesday, April 21, 2010

First tomatoes

Today we are in what we call a cold and rainy spell for us folks in Southern California. That means night temps are down to 51 F while day temps are up to 61 F. Yes, absolutely freezing. And then we had amazing winds preceding the storm front. They felt as though they were directly from the frozen lands up north. We are not in the middle of tropical weather.

Nevertheless, being brave, intrepid and perhaps a bit foolish, I now have planted three tomato plants, all cold-tolerant (Valencia, Black Cherry, and Stupice) . Note that I have three volunteers growing quietly in the darkest corner of my plot while I have been railing about the need to plant cold-tolerant tomatoes here one block from the beach.

My Valencia has at least three wee tomatoes, of which one you can see in the photo below.

Welcome!

I'm happy to garden a plot in a southern California community garden, Sunset zone 24, USDA zone 10b. *Update: Unfortunately, we are in the middle of a horrible drought, and with that comes a huge reduction in the slug and snail population. * The comments below about the slugs and snails no longer apply but I am keeping the comments for historical reasons.

***Unfortunately, since it comes with a couple zillion slugs, I am quite frankly on the warpath every day. We, the several zillion slugs and I, are about a block from the beach so our summers are quite cool and foggy while our winters are a bit milder than inland southern California. We garden year round though tomatoes are a bit challenged unless they are either cold-tolerant or come equipped with outdoor heaters.***